Catalog

Helter Skelter: Qaddafi's African Adventure

The latest age of slavery has been the enslavement of Blacks by White people. The memory of this age will persist in the thinking of Black people until they have vindicated themselves.

This tragic and historic event, the resulting bitter feeling, and the yearning for the vindication of a whole race, constitute a psychological motivation of Black people to vengeance and triumph that cannot be disregarded.

from Qaddafi's Green Book, p 29. And how does Qaddafi expect that black people will achieve that vindication?

Black people are now in a very backward social situation, but such backwardness works to bring about their numerical superiority because their low standard of living has shielded them from methods of birth control and family planning. Also, their old social traditions place no limit on marriages, leading to their accelerated growth. The population of other races has decreased because of birth control, restrictions on marriage, and constant occupation in work, unlike the Blacks, who tend to be less obsessive about work in a climate which is continuously hot.

from Qaddafi's Green Book, p 30. So we will do it through shear forces of numbers, by the explosive population growth of "starving and ignorant Africans."

From his 33 page 'book' that even today, he hands out wherever he goes, it's easy to see that Mummar Qaddafi promotes a lot of the standard racist mythology that black people are lazy and promiscuous. He also uses the spectra of increasing hordes of blacks looking for vengeance to create a climate of fear, another standard racist ploy. As we will see, racism and the creation of discord between Africans and Arabs has been one of the keys to his 42 year rule. Another is his cynical and self-serving manipulation of contradictions among the people in sub-Saharan Africa.

Mummar Qaddafi represents that most virulent type of racist that combines parentalism with false adulation and then schemes to used racism and the fear of blacks by lighter skinned people to further his own plans. We have seen these racist fantasies play out before. Most notably with Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and most recently with Anders Behring Breivik who took large parts of the Unabomber Manifesto, updated it by replacing the word "black people" with "Muslims" and republished it as the manifesto for his killing spree that left 93 Norwegians dead three weeks ago. Here's a sample from the Unabomber Manifesto:

In all ESSENTIAL respects most leftists of the over socialized type want to make the black man conform to white, middle- class ideals. They want to make him study technical subjects, become an executive or a scientist, spend his life climbing the status ladder to prove that black people are as good as white. They want to make black fathers"responsible," they want black gangs to become nonviolent, etc. But these are exactly the values of the industrial-technological system...

Mummar Qaddafi and Charles Manson

While Mummar Qaddafi was building his influence in the Libyan army and plotting his coup d'état against King Idris, Charley Manson was developing his racist philosophy and raising a Family. Manson's "philosophy" or more accurately, scheme, was that beginning in the summer of 1969, black people would rise up in vengeance for all the years of abuse and overthrow "whitey" while performing hideous acts of retribution. Manson and his Family would hide out in the dessert until the violence was all over. Soon the blacks would realize that they are too stupid to rule themselves and they would ask Charles Manson, as the only white man left, to rule them. He called this, his vision of revolution, an apocalyptic war between black and white that would put him on top, "Helter Skelter." I know this sounds unbelievable but it did cost a number of people their lives.

When events failed to develop as Manson expected. He decided to help them out. He claimed that black people were too dumb to figure it out for themselves so he would have to get the ball rolling. On August 8, 1969 Manson told the Family "Now is the time for Helter Skelter." That night, after midnight, he had his followers slaughter five adults including Roman Polanski's wife Sharon Tate who was eight months pregnant, at Terry Melcher's Hollywood home. The next night they murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca at their Los Feliz home. They left "clues" at the crime scene that were intended to make it look like black militants had done it, like writing"Death to Pigs" in the victim's own blood and carving the word "war" in the stomach of their victims.

By August 16, Manson and 25 Family members were safely behind bars. Two weeks later, on September 1, 1969, Mummar Qaddafi came to power in an African country that put tremendous oil wealth at his disposal. So while Charles Manson has been safely behind bars for the past 42 years, Mummar Qaddafi has been given billions of dollars in oil money and the weapons they can buy, and the whole continent of Africa in which to play out his racist fantasies. This has meant four decades of Qaddafi manipulation and war mongering in Africa that has been one of the major factors that has held the African continent, it's nations and it's people, down for so long. When Qaddafi finally falls, which should be soon, it will be a liberating experience for the whole continent of Africa.

Racist politics and a tumultuous summer of '69 aren't the only things Charles Manson and Mummar Qaddafi have in common. Phil Mershon has noted other similarities:

Both men consider themselves revolutionaries. Both men love to make speeches more than to engage in simple conversation. Both men have a small group of supporters and a humongous group of people who hate them. Both men prefer to live in the desert. Both men impersonated hippies. Both men employed female bodyguards. Both men have indicated that they believe themselves to possess supernatural powers. And both men give every indication of endorsing serial killings.

Both men also play chess and both men have the same attorney, the world’s most infamous lawyer, Giovanni di Stefano, aka The Devil’s Advocate. Or rather, Manson now has Qaddafi's attorney, since Stefano was Qaddafi's attorney first. Stefano just took on Manson as a client this past January whereas we know he worked for Qaddafi as early as 2007. Then he represented Qaddafi's promise not to execute the Bulgarian nurses accused of starting a HIV epidemic in Libya. Qaddafi's son's girl friend made him promise to get them off the hook before she would date him, but that's another story.

Possibly even Stefano doesn't know who really put him on the Manson case. His contact is "an attorney from Sacramento, California." That's how they do it when they don't want to leave a trail, so we are free to speculate about who might be eccentric enough to want to give Manson a second trial and has the money to pay an extremely expensive mouthpiece to pursue it or who might want to communicate with Manson because his lawyer would have access.

Qaddafi and African Immigrants

Last August, Qaddafi attempted to use European fear of unchecked waves of African immigrants to extort money from the Europe, telling them the EU should pay Libya at least 5bn euros (£4bn; $6.3bn) a year to stop illegal African immigration and avoid a "black Europe".

"Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European, and even black, as there are millions who want to come in," said Col Gaddafi, quoted by the AFP news agency

"We don't know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans," Col Gaddafi said.

"We don't know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions."

When it comes to immigrant policy, Qaddafi is on the same page as Anders Behring Breivik and other violent neo-fascists that are troubling Europe. For much of the past decade, Qaddafi has been working with wellknownracist, Silvio Berelusoni, the Italian PM, to turn Libya into the cork that keeps African immigrants bottled up. In September 2004 Human Rights Watch wrote:

Libya’s recent immigration “reforms,” introduced by Colonel Muammar Gadaffi apparently after overtures from Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi, resemble a catalogue of human rights abuses against migrants and asylum-seekers. African internees and migrants in Libya are being detained in what one MEP has described as “catastrophic conditions.” And Libya continues forcibly to deport Eritrean refugees to Eritrea, where they face arrest, illegal detention and torture. If Libya is called on to run EU processing camps, we can surely expect more of the same.

Last December, HRW wrote about Libya in their world report on abuse and detentions at borders:

Since May 2009, Italy has joined forces with Libya to patrol the waters from the coast of Libya to Italy’s Mediterranean territories, principally the island of Lampedusa. Libya in 2010 operated patrol boats provided by Italy with Italian personnel on board to interdict boat migrants on the high seas and in Libyan waters and return them summarily to Libya with no screening to identify refugees, the sick or injured, pregnant women, unaccompanied children, victims of trafficking, or victims of violence against women. All interdicted boat migrants are detained upon arrival in Libya in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. Libya is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and has no asylum law or procedure. In April, Libyan Foreign Secretary Moussa Koussa said his country “does not have any refugees but only illegal migrants who break the laws.” In July the government said that there were 3 million irregular migrants in Libya. A new law on “Illegal Migration” criminalizes trafficking of migrants but does not mention protections for refugees.

In June, Libya closed the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tripoli and expelled its representative. It later allowed the office nominally to reopen but only with highly restricted permission to work on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers whom it had registered prior to closing, and without access to newly detained migrants and asylum seekers.

On June 28, a group of detained Eritrean migrants tried to escape from a migrant detention center after Libyan officials allowed Eritrean embassy officials to take their photos and forced them to complete forms raising fear of deportation. In response, Libyan authorities transported 245 Eritrean detainees from the Misrata detention on Libya’s northern coast to another detention center at al-Biraq, north of Sabha, in an apparent attempt to deport them. Some of these Eritreans were among those whom Italy had forcibly returned to Libya without giving them an opportunity to claim asylum. After an international outcry, Libya released this group but did not provide them with any support or protection. They remain in Libya.

"Daniel," a 26-year-old Eritrean interviewed in Sicily, told Human Rights Watch what happened after Maltese authorities interdicted the boat he was on and towed it to a Libyan vessel, which brought his group back to Libya (to read Daniel's complete account, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/en/node/85530 ):

"We were really tired and dehydrated when we arrived in Libya. I thought, ‘If they beat me, I won't feel a thing.' When we arrived, there were no doctors, nothing to help, just military police. They started punching us. They said, ‘You think you want to go to Italy.' They were mocking us. We were thirsty, and they were hitting us with sticks and kicking us. For about one hour they beat everyone who was on the boat."

They were taken to Misrata prison in a crowded, airless truck and beaten again when they arrived:

"We were treated badly at Misrata. We were Eritreans, Ethiopians, Sudanese, and a few Somalis. The rooms were not clean. We were only given a half-hour a day to take air outside, and the only reason they let us out at all was to count us. We sat in the sun. Anyone who spoke would be hit. I was beaten with a black plastic hose."

and

Many of the worst abuses reported to Human Rights Watch occurred after failed attempts to leave Libya. One of the migrants, "Pastor Paul" (all names have been changed), a 32-year-old Nigerian, told Human Rights Watch how Libyan authorities brutally treated him when the Libyans stopped his boat shortly after it left Libya on October 20, 2008:

"We were in a wooden boat, and Libyans in a [motorized inflatable] Zodiac started shooting at us. They told us to return to shore. They kept shooting until they hit our engine. One person was shot and killed. I don't know the men who did the shooting, but they were civilians, not in uniforms. Then a Libyan navy boat came and got us and started beating us. They collected our money and cell phones. I think the Zodiac boat was working with the Libyan navy. The Libyan navy took us back in their big ship and sent us to Bin Gashir deportation camp. When we arrived there, they immediately started beating me and the others. They beat some of the boys until they could not walk."

European Commission figures show that in 2009 the number of people caught trying to enter Italy illegally fell to 7,300, from 32,052 in 2008. The data was collected under the EU's Eurodac fingerprinting system.

Col Gaddafi has forged close ties with Italy since a friendship treaty was signed two years ago.

"Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Mu`ammar al-Gaddafi are building their friendship agreement at the expense of people from other countries whom both regard as expendable,"

Ali Muslin, noting that the problem of Arab racism towards Africans goes back more than a thousand years, said:

For all his claims to the contrary, Gaddafi has no respect for Africa or Africans. This is not just manifested by how very inhumanely he treats African workers and asylum seekers, nor by his self declaration as the King of All African tribes, but mainly by his deeply ingrained chauvinism and pretension to be an African Messiah. No wonder he refers to Africans as starved and ignorant and violates the rights of Black Africans in Libya.

Qaddafi's Meddling in Africa

Gaddafi the racist has for long been also Gaddafi the dictator, killing off his opponents both inside and outside his country, financing the likes of Fode Sankoh in Sierra Leone and meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia, etc.

Two aspects of Qaddafi's Green Book philosophy have combined help keep Africa roaming around in the wilderness for 40 years. First, Qaddafi believes all governments should be the subject of violent revolution by the few:

If the instrument of government is dictatorial, as is the case in the world's political systems today, society's awareness of deviation from its laws is expressed only through violence to redirect its course, i.e., revolution against the instrument of government. Violence and revolution, even though they reflect the sentiments of society regarding deviation, do not constitute an exercise in which the whole of society takes part. Rather, violence and revolution are carried out by those who have the capability and courage to take the initiative and proclaim the will of society.

The Green Book p.10 , and before you protest that he was only referring to "dictatorial governments," I would ask you to consult the Green Book on what he means by that. For example:

51 per cent of the votes leads to a dictatorial governing body in the guise of a false democracy, since 49 per cent of the electorate is ruled by an instrument of government they did not vote for, but which has been imposed upon them. Such is dictatorship... This is the reality of the political systems prevailing in the world today. They are dictatorial systems and it is evident that they falsify genuine democracy.

The Green Book p.1 Secondly, every group, no matter how small, deserves it's own national liberation movement:

Contemporary national liberation movements are themselves social movements; they will not come to an end before every group is liberated from the domination of another group.

That's a perfect formula for endless wars.

If some of these quotes makes Mummar Qaddafi sound as crazy as Charles Manson, remember he's not the one that is behind bars with a swastika tattooed on his forehead. He's the one with a country to run and billions of dollars to spend. That means he's not crazy, he's eccentric.

And he has billions to spend any way that suits him including favoring whoever he regards as "revolutionary" around the world. The Economist tells us how he gets his money:

Libya is earning over $10 billion a year from its 1.4m barrels of oil a day. But Libyans see little of it. This year’s budget amounts to far less than its oil receipts; the colonel threw away an earlier budget, prepared by the General People’s Congress, saying oil should not be used for ordinary expenses, like salaries. In this hyper-rich state, a teacher’s salary is about $1,200 a year. Libyans have to go to Tunisia for health care. “Wealth, weapons and power lie with the people,” says the Green Book, the colonel’s revelation to the world. But one man decides which people.

One American group that he has favored has been Louis Farrakhan's Nation on Islam. In fact, support for the Nation of Islam, or Black Muslims, as they were often called in the '60's, is something else that unites Mummar Qaddafi and Charles Manson. Manson even talked about the NOI in court:

"'The Black Muslims' they know the way, they’re ahead of us. Fifty years ahead. They are way ahead of the Black Panthers, dig. They know what’s happening. And I turn them on because I’m the only white guy in here that knows Mohammed.”

While Charles Manson had big plans for the Nation of Islam, and clearly supported them spiritually, he was never able to support them financially, not like Mummar Qaddafi. While we can only guess at the amount of money Qaddafi has given to the NOI over the years, clearly it has been in the millions. Louis Farrakhan built the Chicago Maryam Mosque 40 years ago with a $3 million loan from Qaddafi. That much is documented. We also know that he tried to give Farrakhan a $250,000 Qaddafi Human Rights Award in 1996 in violation of U.S. sanctions, and after Farrakhan's Million Man March in October 1995, Qaddafi promised the group a billion dollars.

And then there is this: In 1987, a Federal jury convicted five members of El Rukins, described as an urban street gang close to Farrakhan, of conspiring to commit terrorist acts against the U.S:

The plotters, prosecutors said, expected to receive $2.5 million from Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for bombing buildings and airplanes and assassinating American politicians. The verdict marked the first time American citizens had been found guilty of planning terrorist acts for a foreign government in return for money.

Obviously, by funneling millions in Libyan oil money to Farrakhan's group over the years, Qaddafi has given it an influence that exceeds its support among African-Americans, but his meddling in the affairs of the United States is nothing when compared to his meddling in the affairs of African countries. The dictator fancies himself the Che Guevara of Africa and the continent is his playground. From Anna Mahjar-Barducci we have this survey of Qaddafi's plague upon African affairs:

Chad

Gaddafi has a long and complicated relation with its neighbor, Chad. Gaddafi brought Chadian President Deby to power in 1990 by supporting him financially and militarily. Deby was a rival to former Chadian President Hissene Habré, Gaddafi's enemy. In 1980, Libya invaded Chad in an attempt to remove Habré from power. Libya occupied and annexed the Aozou Strip, a region of 44.00 square miles in the North of Chad, bordering Libya's entire 500 mile frontier.

At the time, the United States and France helped Chad in order to contain Libya's regional ambitions. The state of warfare between Chad and Libya lasted from 1978 to 1988. Gaddafi was defeated and had to put aside his hegemonic dreams in Chad. In retaliation to US and France's support to Chad, however, Gaddafi's government sponsored the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988 and French Airline UTA Flight 772 in 1989.

Habré's government, however, did not last long. He was opposed by the Zaghawa ethnic group. In November 1990, a rebel offensive against Habré was led by Idriss Deby, the Zaghawa former army commander, supported by Gaddafi.

Darfur Region

Darfur, a region in western Sudan, is where war erupted in 2003, when the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) emerged to fight the government in a battle over power, resources and land allocation. Gaddafi was deeply involved in the Darfur crisis. Libya openly supported the Darfur rebel group, JEM, led by Khalil Ibrahim. Ibrahim was born in Darfur and belongs to the African tribe of Zaghawa, spread between Darfur and Chad. Even though Khalil claimed he was leading a battle against the discrimination practiced by African tribes in Darfur, he declared in an interview with Saudi-owned Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper on May 3, 2005, that his goal was "one state that includes Egypt, Libya and Chad." Khalil has been supported by the president of Chad, Idriss Deby. Deby, himself is a Zaghawa.

Gaddafi's support to the JEM, which is fighting the central government in Khartoum, can be explained through his controversial relations with Sudan. In the 70s, the former Sudanese President Jaffar Nimeiry was getting closer to the US. Gaddafi, being a fighter against "Imperialism," severed diplomatic relations with Khartoum and allegedly plotted three failed coups. Relations between the two countries did not completely normalize until now.

Gaddafi is paying a pivotal role in keeping alive the conflict in Darfur. Recently, Khalil Ibrahim has been residing in Tripoli since May 2010, after being barred entry to Chad, while the Chadian government was trying to pursue a rapprochement with Sudan.

Central Africa Republic (CRA)

Gaddafi also intervened militarily in the CRA; he supported coups and violence there. Gaddafi was a supporter of former CRA President, Ange-Félix Patassé, accused of war crimes, and of Jean Pierre Bemba (former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo), who intervened with his militias in CRA following Patassé's request, and with Gaddafi's support. Bemba was arrested in Belgium in 2008 on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Congo Brazzaville

The President of Congo Brazzaville, Sassou Nguesso, openly supports Gaddafi. The Libyan leader has supported him both financially and militarily during a civil war in Congo that brought Nguesso back to power in 1997. Nguesso, with other African leaders, wanted to visit Tripoli on March 20th supposedly in support of Gaddafi, but did not receive international permission.

Gabon

Gabon supported the council's resolution on Libya authorizing the no-fly zone over Libya and "all necessary measures" to protect civilians. The vote comes as a surprise as Gabon President, Ali Bongo, is considered a good friend of Gaddafi, and Libya has invested hugely in Gabon. Ali Bongo succeeded his father, Omar Bongo, as President of Gabon. Omar Bongo, who stayed in power for 42 years, converted to Islam under Gaddafi's influence. Gabon's vote should therefore be understood in light of its internal political crisis. Bongo is accused of supporting dictators and of being one himself. Massive protests have been waged against Bongo, but were soon repressed by the use of force.

The Polisario

Gaddafi has supported the Polisario against Morocco financially and logistically, since the mid-1970s by providing equipment for an entire army.

Mauritania

[Some] popular committees [are] linked to Gaddafi in Mauritania. Since Gaddafi came to power, Libya has intervened in Mauritania's internal affairs. Gaddafi is even accused of having plotted several coups in Mauritania.

Wikipedia talks about the role Colonel Qaddafi played in the Sudanese conflict.

Under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi Libya continued to pursue foreign policy directed along ideological and pragmatic lines.[2]This resulted in several instances of conflict between the two nations between 1972 and 1976. In 1976 Sudan charged that Libya was involved in a terrorist plot against its government. This led to a severance of relations between the nations. In the late 1970s and 1980s Sudanese and Libyan foreign policy clashed over several regional conflicts. These included the Chadian-Libyan conflict, the Libya-Egypt conflict and Libyan support for Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.[3]

In these cases Libya’s conflict with Sudan resulted from Gaddafi’s regional goals of pan-Arabism and was heavily influenced by relations with Egypt.[4]The Chad-Libyan conflict in particular influenced the foreign policy of several African countries towards Libya. Pro-Libyan supporters were set against an anti-Libyan side which included Sudan and Egypt.[5]Some sub-Saharan countries, such as Zaire, supported the anti-Libyan forces in Chad out of fear of a Libyan expansion.[6]In 1986 Libya assisted the Mahdi government under Omar al-Bashir to assume power in Sudan, resuming relations between the two nations.[7]

In August 1971, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi helped reverse a communist coup against Sudanese President Nimeiry by diverting a British airliner carrying one of the coup’s leaders and handing him over to Nimeiry to be hanged.[9]Libya turned over two of the top communist plotters to the Sudanese authorities, who executed them shortly afterward. However, a year later Sudan accused Libya of involvement in three successive coup attempts and severed diplomatic relations.[10]

Eric Ham of the XII Project summed-up Mummar Qaddafi's international role as follows:

During much of his reign he was seen as a pariah and a cold-blooded killer who financed an odd assortment of guerilla movements and wreaked havoc in surrounding states and internationally. He attacked Chad and Egypt, fomented trouble in Sudan, sent Libyan soldiers to defend Idi Amin in Uganda, tried to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons, provided training and support for Liberia’s Charles Taylor, bank rolled the Black September Movement, sent arms to the Provisional IRA, and liquidated opponents by the hundreds at home and overseas.

This is one way Qaddafi has spent the billions he has looted from Libyan oil. He spent it keeping sub-Saharan Africa in turmoil by pouring in money and guns to support first one side and then the other.

“Libya could have been as luxurious as a Gulf state,”said a Nation of Islam representative at a recent international gathering. “Instead Qaddafi has taken the oil wealth to use as a liberating force for the struggling oppressed peoples of the world.”

I'm sure that the Libyan people take a different view of that question and so too do the "struggling oppressed peoples of the world" IMHO.

The Arabs have a historic problem with racism, as the Europeans do, and it stems from the same place. It is a legacy of African slavery. I have already outlined two ways Qaddafi has aggravated the problem in Libya: 1.) He has fanned turmoil and instability on the continent and enforced immigration policies that have forced increasing numbers of Africans to 'hold up' in Libya, and 2.) He has squandered much of Libya's wealth on foreign adventures in Africa that didn't do anybody any good. Except for war profiteers that is. To these two, I must now add a third, the use of African mercenaries against the Libyan people.

Qaddafi's African Mercenaries

Qaddafi has long employed a great variety of armed forces in his various African adventures so it should not surprise anyone that he is making full use of them in his last desperate bid to stay in power. After all, mercenaries fight for money and that is the one thing Mummar Qaddafi still has a lot of. Anna Mahjar-Barducci gives us the breakdown once more:

The mercenaries reportedly come from different countries of North- and Sub-Saharan Africa: Chad, Mauritania, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Liberia. And these mercenaries come in different categories: some are pure mercenaries, moved by money; others are soldiers sent directly by their central governments, and others are members of guerrilla movements supported by Gaddafi in the past. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) claims that Gaddafi is also using child soldiers to face the Libyan uprising.

The International Federation of Human Rights numbers the mercenaries to be 6,000 whereas Human Rights Solidarity gives an estimate of 30,000[1]. According to the Qatari satellite channel, Al-Jazeera, Gaddafi's regime has brought approximately 50,000 mercenaries to Tripoli, and about 150,000 mercenaries throughout Libya[2].

Chad

Libyan revolutionaries claim that the government of Chad is playing a vital role in providing "mercenaries" to Gaddafi through the overland route to the Libyan town of Sabha, just across the Chad border. Ali Zeidan, spokesman of the exiled Libyan Human Rights League (LHRL), claims that two Chadian generals are commanding the mercenaries, under the orders of the Chad's ambassador to Libya, Daoussa Deby, the brother of Chadian President Idriss Deby.

The Government of Chad denies providing mercenaries to Gaddafi. Chadian FM Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement. "These are outrageous and malicious reports. […] Chad has never sent or authorized the recruitment of its nationals to fight in Libya. Chad cannot afford such a gesture, as we are concerned about the situation in our neighboring country."[3]

Darfur Region

Sudan's foreign ministry says it has evidence that JEM members are among the mercenaries supporting Gaddafi. The JEM has denied these allegations.[4]

Central Africa Republic (CRA)

News items report the presence of mercenaries from Central Africa Republic among Gaddafi's forces. UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado told the Associated Press that there is "a serious concern" that child soldiers are among the mercenaries that Gaddafi is hiring to attack rebel forces. The spokeswoman for the UN children's agency said the mercenaries come from the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, and Sudan's Darfur region, which are all places "with known child soldiers."[6]

French news items suggest that Bemba's militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, is among the mercenaries fighting with Gaddafi against the uprising.[7]

DR Congo (Former Zaire)

According to news items, Congolese mercenaries in Libya are members of rebels' groups[8]. Allegedly among them, as mentioned above, there is also former Congo VP Jean Pierre Bemba Bemba's militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo.

Equatorial Guinea

[12] According to news items ... President Obiang sent troops to help Gaddafi[13]. The estimated number is of 650 Guinean soldiers[14]. Another news item reported that the government of Equatorial Guinea had prepared a group of 120 policemen and gendarmes to send to fight in Libya. The Guinean government told them that in Libya they would have received a 60-day training course as "border police." However while the 120 men were waiting to fly to Libya, they were apparently told that there was no safe way or possibility of landing in any Libyan airport[15].

The Polisario

The Moroccan Press Agency reports members of the Polisario, Western Sahara Separatist Group, left Mali's capital Bamako on board a Libyan aircraft heading to Algiers, intending to enter Libya by land to support Gaddafi's forces against rebels[17].

The Polisario is a politico-military organization fighting Morocco in order to take control of the former Western Sahara, currently under Morocco's sovereignty, and win independence for that region. The Polisario's headquarters are now based in Algeria, in the town of Tindouf. According to news items, Gaddafi spoke directly to Muhammad Abdelaziz, leader of the Polisario Front, to ask for help.

According to sources, over two hundred well trained Polisario's fighters trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare have been selected and armed with Kalashnikovs, grenades and rocket launchers, and sent on their way on board 4X4 at the end of last week, and headed for Libya. The mercenaries took the path leading to the Libyan border town of Atchane Al, where they had to be escorted by the Libyan military to Tripoli, passing by the city of Sabha[18].

The Moroccan American Center for Policy, reported that Libya's former Minister of State for Immigration & Expatriates, Ali Errishi, condemned members of the Polisario for their "hypocrisy" in claiming to fight for freedom and progressive ideals, but joining the Gaddafi's mercenary army. [19]Errishi confirmed that well-armed members of the Polisario are among Gaddafi's mercenaries.

Algeria

The African Press Agency claimed that the Algerian government is supporting Gaddafi in recruiting mercenaries, especially from the Polisario, as Algeria is supporting this separatist group against Morocco. "The Algerian government spares no effort to facilitate the arrival of new reinforcements for Gaddafi to shield his regime from falling and avoid the repercussions on Algeria's stability that may arise from such a collapse".[20]

The Algerian government denied being involved in fighting the uprising against Gaddafi. The foreign ministry said in a statement, that these "false lies" which were reported by internet websites and TV satellite channels are "baseless," and Algeria was committed to non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, said the statement.

Tunisia

The Algerian paper Echorouk reports that after the Tunisian revolution, militias loyal to former Tunisian President Zine el Abedine Ben Ali escaped from Tunisia and found refuge in Libya[22]. According to news items, these militias are now fighting to protect Gaddafi's regime.
Mauritania

Mauritanians mercenaries are reported to be fighting for Gaddafi in Libya. A Libyan political opponent living in Washington DC, Mahmoud Chemam, stated that popular committees linked to Gaddafi in Mauritania are trying to recruit mercenaries to send to Libya[23]. Pro-Gaddafi's parties and movements in Mauritania are part of the fundamentalist Islamic Front Action. Mauritanian leader of the opposition, Messaoud Ould Boulkheir, called for investigation of Mauritanian mercenaries in Libya[24].

Human Rights Watch has called upon Qaddafi to stop using foreign mercenaries against the Libyan people. When arguing the UN should suspend Libya's Human Rights Council membership they said:

The League of Arab States on February 22 denounced the acts of violence being committed against civilians as severe violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, in particular the hiring of foreign mercenaries and the use of live ammunition and heavy artillery against protestors, and banned Libyan delegations from participating in all bodies affiliated with the Arab League until the Libyan authorities met the League's demands to guarantee the security of its people.

And Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch told Qaddafi"He should call his forces including mercenaries off immediately."

But mercenaries are just about all he has left.

Racism has also been a problem among the freedom fighters as they are a product of Libyan society and they cannot entirely escape it's faults. Qaddafi's use of African mercenaries against the uprising has exacerbated this problem, as he knew it would. Just as he has always recruited security forces from the west to serve in the east and vice versa, he is using the old tactic of divide-and-conquer once again.

He knew that using African mercenaries would further divide the forces of the revolution. He knew that it would encourage the Arab distrust of the African immigrant and give the most backwards element in Libyan society a crutch. As a result, there have been some crimes committed against innocent Africans by some associated with the opposition. This must not be tolerated! Those creating the future of Libya must not fall for Qaddafi's provocation. Fighting racism must become one of the tasks of the revolution if it is to succeed in building a free Libya in Africa.
The King of Kings

Another way that Qaddafi spends Libya's billions is on a lavish lifestyle for himself and his family that is second to none. A girl friend of Mummar's son Saadi Qaddafi for six years, Dafinka Mircheva, gives us a window into their royal lifestyle:

His aides told her he spent £170 million a year on private jets, five-star hotels, supercars, lap-dancers, jewels and designer clothes.

‘Money was no object,’ she says. ‘He would always have a black suitcase stuffed with thousands of banknotes.

‘If he ran out, he would call the embassy and they would have more delivered to his hotel.’

She says he began a prolonged pursuit of her after that first meeting in 2004 – lavishing her with gifts and proposals of marriage – despite having a wife, the daughter of a commander in the Libyan military.

After she finally agreed to date him, Dafinka says Saadi paid £500,000 for her favourite pop group, The Pussycat Dolls, to perform for her at his birthday party in Cannes in the South of France

‘In his room were black leather suitcases full of cash. He would have £150,000 at any one time.’

She says he bought her £25,000 designer dresses and spent £10,000 on dinner at Raspoutine, a Russian restaurant in Paris. He is said to have owned a purple Bugatti Veyron road car worth £1million.

‘Saadi will never look at the price. He doesn’t care. Someone else always pays the bill.'

He acted like a little spoiled prince and he treated everyone else like peons. She added, ‘His entourage were mainly Libyans. He would call them all his servants. I told him many times not to tell people that. He told me, “I do what I want. I want to call them servants.”

And why not? Daddy has a special exemption for servants in his Green Book [p.19]:

Since the new socialist society is based on partnership and not on a wage system, natural socialist rules do not apply to domestic servants because they render services rather than production. Services have no tangible material product and cannot be divided into shares according to the natural socialist rule.

The ex-girl friend's tale continues:

Two years later, Dafinka and Saadi visited Tanzania for a week-long safari, staying in £600-a-night lodges. She says: ‘He killed an impala. I remember him asking, “What other gaming do you have for royalty?” He saw himself as the son of a king.’

The first monarch of united Libya was King Idris. He ruled for 17 years from 1951 to 1969. He was King but he shared power with a Constitution. In 1969 he was overthrown by Mummar Qaddafi who declared a socialist republic but in point of fact, he has treated Libya as his personal property, controlled it with armed violence and ruled it as though he were King. And this absolute monarch makes life and death decisions without a Constitution or a Parliament.

Cynthia McKinney will tell you that "Libyans govern themselves by The Green Book, a form of direct democracy based on the African Constitution concept that the people are the first and final source of all power," but that is pure rubbish. For the past forty-two years Libya has been ruled as a tribal kingdom and Mummar Qaddafi has held as much dictatorial power as has ever been held by any king. This is how Qaddafi does it:

The supreme leader would be King, ruling through tribal elders who would report to the Kgotla, also fetching advice for the central committee based in Tripoli. The King of All Kings, like the Great Cock, Mobutu Sese Seko, of the Congo, would open the national radio or television station in the morning as the national anthem blared in the background.

The Cock would then tour the hinterlands on the back of a covered land rover in full army regalia, waving at the subjects as he headed for the party headquarters which were invariably housed near or inside a luxurious hotel, followed by a coterie of sycophants who posed as heads of the civil service.

It was understood that the serfs would gather at the Kgotla to see the King of Kings in the flesh, and to reward him with their only chickens and goats which he would enjoy with them at the fireside after they were duly cooked to standard by the chief chef brought along with the presidential entourage from Tripoli, Gaborone or Lusaka.

The chef, of course, travelled as part of the National Guard that looks after the safety of the country and the Great Cock.

This business progresses from a presidential tour, to custom, to tradition until, after 42 years, it becomes a national ritual at which the King of Kings arrives at Kgotla to listen to the village gossip about the performance of the tribal or provincial leaders. The Great Leader, points out the ministers and civil servants who will put things right when he returns to Tripoli, having also handed out a gift or two to the lowliest of the poor in each strategic village.

Soon, a culture develops where the well-being of the nation is identical with that of the Great Leader and the King of Kings seeks deification on earth, demonstrating his powers by extending generous assistance to poor nations like The Sudan, at the same time providing the budget for the Organisation of African Unity, AU, OPEC and others.

Tribal sectarianism and conflicts are remnants from Libya's feudal past which is not yet history and that's what the Qaddafi regime has been based on. For all the "revolutionary" talk about "socialism" and "people's direct democracy", it has really been a throw back to an earlier period and Qaddafi has ruled as a king without a crown. That he is prepping a son to succeed him is your first clue, kings build dynasties.

The current uprising in Libya is in large part a revolution against these feudal remnants and the "king" that perpetuates them.

But Qaddafi doesn't see his kingdom as limited to Libya. In 2008, Gaddafi invited 200 kings and traditional rulers from sub-Saharan, mainly non-Arab Africa to witness his crowning of as Africa's "King of Kings."

The African Union

Qaddafi isn't the only African leader to rule his country like a king. It's a tradition which he has helped to perpetuate across the continent. Just look at the age of these African leaders:

Did they all take some sort of "till death do us part" vow when they were sworn in?

By the mid 1990's the old OAU [Organization of African Unity] had been pretty much discredited as a "Dictators' Club" that didn't do much for the African people. Mummar Qaddafi revived his idea of the African Union as a way of promoting his vision of a United States of Africa. In September 1999, Qaddafi and the other OAU heads of state issued the Sirte Declaration (named after Qaddafi's hometown) calling for the establishment of an African Union. It was established at Lusaka in 2001, it was bank-rolled from the beginning by Qaddafi.

The African Union has a number of objectives, including developing the political and socio-economic integration of the continent, defending interests common to all Africans, achieving peace and security on the continent and promoting human rights and good governance. For Mummar Qaddafi it is a vehicle for implementing his vision of a United States of Africa in which he would be made King of Kings.

With Qaddafi in charge, we can imagine how the meetings go. Wait, we don't have to imagine. South Africa's Jacob Zuma tells us:

"He has his own ways of holding meetings." said Zuma jokingly at a two-day ANC provincial general council at the University of KwaZulu-Natal's Westville Campus.
Describing how the African Union (AU) chairman conducted the conference in his country this week, Zuma said "quarter of the speeches during the meeting was done by him...He forgets that there is lunch time and he forgets that people have to sleep."

Commenting on the election of Qaddafi as chairman of the AU in 2009, Henry Owuor wrote:

This is the perfect time for Col Gaddafi to take the reins of leadership. He can push his agenda. There are actually very few leaders who can challenge him.

In the past, South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki could challenge Gaddafi at AU meetings but he is no longer in office and his replacement, Kgalema Motlanthe is an acting president who is due to hand over to his mentor Jacob Zuma at elections set for mid this year.

On the other hand, Africa’s most populous state, Nigeria, has a president who is perennially sick and who was on holiday as the AU met in Addis. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua instead sent his vice-president Mr Goodluck Jonathan, a man who cannot challenge Gaddafi. In the past, retired general Olusegun Obasanjo was a man Gaddafi could not ignore but his presidency ended in 2007.

What happened in Addis is that many heads of state simply did not show up because they did not want to commit to Gaddafi’s grand project of a single government for Africa.
...

Ask Zambia’s Rupiah Banda, in office since October 2008 or Ghana’s John Attar Mills in office since January and who did not even bother to show up in Addis or Sierra Leone’s Ernest Bai Koroma who took power in 2007 if they are planning to take on Gaddafi at the next AU summit in July and what you will get is “no comment.’’

"I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level."

So Mummar Qaddafi's vision of Africa is for the whole continent to be a United States of Africa with himself named "King of All African Tribes", a non-black, ruling over all the African people. That is also pretty much where Charley Manson's fantasy ended up, one white guy ruling over all the blacks in the world. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why one of these men hasn't been able to make parole in 42 years. The question is why has the other one been allowed to run a muck for 42 years?